Synchron, a brain-computer interface company invested by Shanda Chen Tianqiao, is newly supported by Gates and Bezos.
On December 15, Synchron announced an oversubscribed US$75 million Series C financing, led by ARCH Venture Partners, Gates Frontier, Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, Reliance Digital Health Limited, Greenoaks, Shanda Group and Melbourne Nearly 20 existing investors including universities participated in this round of financing.
It is understood that Synchron’s new round of financing will accelerate the development of its first platform product, Switch BCI, and launch a key clinical trial. Once the FDA’s key experiments are successful, its device is expected to be commercially approved and officially launched in 2024 at the earliest.
Dr. Thomas Oxley, CEO of Synchron, said that around 100 million people around the world suffer from upper extremity injuries, and they could all benefit from this technology. “We are very excited to partner with ARCH, a world-class consortium, to bring this technology to those who need it.”
Since its official establishment in 2016, Synchron has always been compared with Musk’s Neuralink.
First of all, in the capital market, Synchron’s total financing so far is US$145 million; Neuralink received US$205 million in Series C financing in July 2021, with a total financing of approximately US$264 million.
Secondly, in terms of project progress, in July this year, Synchron has completed the first (the fifth case, the first four cases were in Australia) implantation surgery on an American patient; Neuralink is still struggling to seek human trials from U.S. regulators approve.
More importantly, Synchron’s success rate is 100%, and patients who have completed the operation so far have not experienced any side effects; Neuralink was approved by the US Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in February this year because it was too cruel to test on animals. ) filed a complaint accusing Neuralink and its host university of violating U.S. federal animal welfare laws nine times.
It is worth mentioning that after Synchron completed the first surgery in the United States, there were reports that Musk started negotiations with them about a potential investment. As a result, Musk did not come, but Gates and Bezos entered the game decisively.
No craniotomy required! Core technology originates from the University of Melbourne, with initial support from the US Department of Defense
Dr Oxley, a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne, the Florey Institute and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, proposed a new brain-computer interface concept back in 2010.
According to information from the Intellectual Property and Innovation Center of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Dr. Oxley has been paying attention to the work of DARPA, the research department of the US Department of Defense, on brain-computer interfaces after completing his research in internal medicine at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in 2011. , and called DARPA with some of his ideas.
Colonel Geoffrey Ling, a military neuroscientist with DARPA’s prosthetics program, invited Dr. Oxley for an informal chat by email. After this, Geoffrey Ling asked Oxley to build a team and invested $1 million in manufacturing and testing equipment.
Dr Oxley assembled a team of scientists, neuroscientists, surgeons, doctors and engineers, assisted by Professor Terry O’Brien from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Subsequently, Dr. Oxley joined hands with Dr. Nicholas Opie (hereinafter referred to as: Opie) to establish SmartStent in Australia.
In April 2016, Synchron announced the acquisition of SmartStent, and the two founders of the latter, Dr. Oxley and Dr. Opie, joined the Synchron team. Subsequently, Dr. Oxley was appointed CEO of the company, and Martin Dieck, co-founder of Lazarus Effect, served as Chairman of Synchron.
According to the introduction of Dimensional Frontier Technology Intelligent Manufacturing, a set of Synchron products consists of three accessories: Stentrode sensors are transported to the brain through blood vessels to collect EEG signals; BrainPort receiving devices are implanted in the patient’s chest for receiving signals and wireless configuration; BrainOS The operating system is used for signal conversion and external communication.
Source: Dimensional Frontier Technology Intelligent Manufacturing
The implantation process of Synchron is as follows: the Stentrode sensor enters the brain through the jugular vein, and flexibly reaches any position along with the blood vessel. After reaching the designated position, the Stentrode will automatically expand and cling to the blood vessel wall to capture electrical signals. The entire operation lasted 2 hours and was performed in an angiography suite without craniotomy, and the operation process did not use robots.
In addition, because it is placed in blood vessels, it avoids inflammation like other solutions—whether the electrode array with craniotomy or the probe without craniotomy, the implanted brain tissue site needs to deal with long-term inflammation caused by foreign bodies The problem.
Up to now, Synchron has accumulated 60 patent applications, focusing on the field of interventional neuroelectrophysiology, with a wide range of target indications: covering paralysis, epilepsy, depression, Parkinson’s, pain, addiction, and non-medical applications.
With an investment of US$145 million, 5 surgeries have been successfully completed
Initially, Professor Clive May, from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, tested Stentrode in the brains of healthy live sheep. The flock is unaffected by this painless, quick and simple procedure and can walk and eat within an hour of the procedure.
Synchron then implanted the Stentrode into the bodies of two ALS patients. After implantation, the two patients successfully performed daily activities of texting, emailing, shopping and online banking through the BCI. Through the eye tracker and brain computer, the two patients also successfully operated Window 10, the click accuracy rate reached over 90%, and they could type 14 and 20 characters per minute.
It is worth mentioning that Synchron monitored four patients implanted with Stentrode for a period of one year, and the results proved that the device was safe, and no disability or death occurred during the monitoring period. A year later, staff monitoring the implants in four patients found that the implants remained in place and that the blood vessels in which the devices were inserted were open.
Entering 2021, Synchron’s development can be described as “smooth”.
Firstly, in June, Synchron completed a US$40 million Series B round of financing, led by Silicon Valley venture capital Khosla Ventures, followed by Shanda Group’s Shanda Grab venture capital, the University of Melbourne and more than ten institutions and existing shareholders, supported by the U.S. and Australian governments This round of financing; just one month later, Synchron passed the US FDA Clinical Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) application; on December 23, O’Keefe, a patient with ALS who had been implanted with Stentrode in April 2020, wrote with his mind After 2 tweets, a simple but meaningful communication signal was sent to the outside world.
Source: Intellectual Property and Innovation Center of CAICT
Finally, on July 6 this year, Synchron completed the first implant operation in an American patient.
A doctor at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York inserted a 1.5-inch implant consisting of wires and electrodes into the brain of an ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) patient, according to reports. Departmental blood vessels. The U.S. patient is the first patient in a six-person clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health and led by Douglas Weber, professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and David Putrino, director of the Center for Rehabilitation Innovation at Mount Sinai. $10 million.
According to Bloomberg, as early as March 2021, Bezos had dinner with Dr. Oxley and expressed interest in investing. After dinner, Bezos told Tom Oxley that he wanted to invest in the business.
After missing the B round of financing, Bezos finally got his wish and participated in Synchron’s C round of financing. The $75 million investment brings the company’s total funding to $145 million.
There is also a layout in China, Chen Tianqiao and Shen Nanpeng jointly bet
In 2016, when Synchron was officially established, Chen Tianqiao, the former richest man in China, and his wife, Luo Qianqian, launched a $1 billion global brain science project and established the Tianqiao Brain Science Institute (TCCI). Partner.
With the continuous advancement of domestic research in related fields, Tianqiao Institute of Brain Science has also established two laboratories in China, namely the Applied Neurotechnology Laboratory, Artificial Intelligence and Mental Health Laboratory, and received the approval from President Mao of Huashan Hospital and The strong support of Director Xu of Shanghai Mental Health Center.
Source: Tianqiao Institute of Brain Science
According to Titanium Media, in October 2020, at the ceremony for the completion of the first cutting-edge laboratory of Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute in China, Tao Hu brought the first-generation product implanted in the brain of mice as a support from the research institute. The project debuted and caused a sensation. Subsequently, Tao Hu joined the Tianqiao Institute of Brain Science and became the first non-neuroscience researcher of the institute in China.
And this also creates convenient conditions for Shanda to invest in incubating Brain Tiger Technology. In January of this year, Brain Tiger Technology, which has been registered for only 3 months, announced the completion of 95 million yuan in angel round and Pre-A round of financing. Chen Tianqiao brought in the Sequoia China Seed Fund founded by Shen Nanpeng to co-lead the investment. This round of financing is also the largest early-stage financing in the field of brain-computer interface in China.
With the scientific research support of Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute and Shanda’s investment incubation, the development of Brain Tiger Technology did not disappoint Chen Tianqiao. In September of this year, at the 2022 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Brain Tiger Technology released three products: NeuroInterface, a medical-grade BCI product with integrated cranial semi-implantation, CereCube, a high-frequency EEG signal processor, and MindExplorer, a software and algorithm cloud platform. Covering both hardware and software dimensions.
A brain-computer interface company that is growing as fast as Brain Tiger Technology is facing a rapidly growing broad market.
According to the “White Paper on Brain-Computer Interface Standardization 2021” released by the China Institute of Electronic Technology Standardization, the global brain-computer interface market size in 2019 is about 1.2 billion US dollars, and it is expected to reach 3.7 billion US dollars in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.5%. The field accounted for 62%, followed by disease treatment. In addition, McKinsey predicts that in the next 10-20 years, the global brain-computer interface industry will generate an economic value of up to US$200 billion.
Entering 2022, 10 start-up companies, including BrainTiger Technology, have been sought after by well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Baidu Ventures, GSR United Capital, Collar Ventures, and ZhenFund.
Just last week, Braincom , a brain-computer interface platform technology company, just completed its C-round financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, led by Songhe Capital. Founded in 2011, the company is one of the earliest domestic companies involved in the industrialization of brain-computer interfaces, and has experienced the development from non-invasive to invasive, from scientific research to medical scenarios.
Source: Enox Data
In addition to the help from the capital market, the brain-computer interface has also received continuous support at the policy level.
In September 2022, Shanghai issued the “Shanghai’s Action Plan for Building Future Industrial Innovation Highlands and Developing and Expanding Future Industrial Clusters”, proposing to accelerate non-invasive brain-computer interface technology, brain-computer fusion technology, brain-inspired chip technology, brain computing neural models, etc. field breakthrough. Explore the application of brain-computer interface technology in the field of medical rehabilitation such as limb movement disorders, chronic disturbance of consciousness, and mental illness.
At present, the brain science research camp has gradually changed from the United States and Europe to the situation of the United States, Europe and Asia. At present, the number of published papers in the field of brain science in China has been closely following that of Europe and the United States, and its patent applications are second only to the United States, and it has already ranked among the top countries in brain science.
(Cover image source: Synchron)
This article is from the WeChat public account “Hunting Cloud Selection” (ID: lieyunjingxuan) , author: Wang Fei, 36 Krypton is authorized to publish.
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related events
- “Synchron” completes US$75 million in Series C financing, led by Arch Venture Partners2022-12-20
- Boruikang received hundreds of millions of yuan in round C financing to promote the minimally invasive implantation of brain-computer interface systems into clinical practice2022-12-15
- Musk: The latest progress of the brain-computer interface company Neuralink will be announced on October 31 2022-08-24
- Zhou Hongyi said that the brain-computer interface needs to be checked and killed by human brain security guards2022-07-19
- Synchron brain-computer interface device approved for clinical trials, implanted into the brain through blood vessels in 2 hours2021-07-29
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